Upcoming Topics:

Dec 2 - Climate Change: What's Happening & What Can We Do: the new 6th report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

****Special Room Henderson Campus C133****

Global temperatures are up 1.9°F, glaciers and arctic sea ice are retreating, oceans are warmer and more acidic, sea level is rising, oxygen levels are decreasing. climate zones are shifting poleward, heat waves, droughts and wildfires, and heavy precipitation events are more common, cold waves are less frequent and less severe, and major hurricanes are more common and occurring farther from the equator. These are unequivocally caused by human activities and are beyond the natural variability of these systems in the past few million years.

How we change society will determine what happens next. The report considers five scenarios for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and looks at the effects through 2100; the scenarios result in rises of from 2.5°F to 8°F. The good news is that extreme cutbacks now could start the temperature back down again within a century, the bad news is that the most likely scenarios lead to changes that are permanent on the scale of human civilization. What we do in the next couple decades is critical, as with each new increment of warming, the changes become more severe and last longer. We’ll look at the evidence, the certainty of the evidence, the projections, what we can do, and specifically at what this means for Southern Nevada.

The full report can be found here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

IPCC Report Climate Change 2021

Dec 16 - How general anesthesia works 

We know general anesthesia works, but we have never really known the mechanism for how it works. Lets dive into the latest research about the "how" 

Previous Topics this Semester:

Sept 9 - Is There More to the Universe than We Know?
No, this isn't specifically about dark matter; it's about something newer and potentially more exciting. All the known subatomic particles, and three of the four known forces, are described in an elaborate, elegant mathematical model called the Standard Model, that successfully predicts the number and properties of these particles. We know the Standard Model isn't complete. Among other problems it doesn't include the fourth known force, gravity; it doesn’t tell us why the known particles fall into the groupings they do; it doesn't explain dark matter, and it doesn't tell us why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe. New, more accurate measurements of a property of a subatomic particle called a muon point to the existence of other, unknown subatomic particles. If we can expand the Standard Model to include them, that may help answer some of these fundamental questions about the universe.

Measurement of the Positive Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment to 0.46 ppm

Sept 23 - Does more privilege make you more entitled?

This paper implemented 7 simple experiments to test the ethical behavior of people in different social classes. This should be an easier paper to deconstruct and I'm sure will bring up other interesting topics while we discuss it. Should be a fun night

Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior

Oct 7 - Beethoven's Tempo

Beethoven carefully marked his sheet music with tempo notations. But most contemporary musicians perform the music at substantially slower tempi. Are we wrong, or was Beethoven?

Conductors’ tempo choices shed light over Beethoven’s metronome

Oct 21 - Hygiene Hypothesis

What have you heard about "eating dirt" to keep the immune system healthy? What has the science said recently; come found out as we cover this review article

Revisiting the Hygiene Hypothesis in the Context of Autoimmunity

Nov 4

Our current models of the solar system don't explain Mercury. This new study of exoplanets and their host stars may help

A compositional link between rocky exoplanets and their host stars

Nov 18 - Unidentified Arial Phenomena

In June the Pentagon declassified information on "UFOs" or what they called unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). Are these worthy of investigation? What role do anomalies (or puzzles that resist explanation within certain scientific paradigms) play in scientific discovery? Let's talk about it

Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

Moving Beyond Definitions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life